by Mike Lewis | Jun 19, 2025
Summary: Quietly buried in HMRC spreadsheets released today is the news that the UK Tax Gap – the gap between tax due and tax collected – seems consistently to be billions of pounds bigger than HMRC previously estimated. New evidence suggests that the...
by Mike Lewis | Jun 11, 2025
Responding to today’s Comprehensive Spending Review (Wednesday 11 June 2025), TaxWatch Director Mike Lewis said: With the Chancellor’s commitment to paying for day-to-day spending only through tax receipts, shrinking the £40 billion tax gap and £38...
by Mike Lewis | May 23, 2025
Previously we found that HMRC is hardly using powers to investigate, penalise and publicise tax advisers who enable tax abuse. Here we look at why these powers aren’t being used: a barrage of legal roadblocks; and holding back on naming and shaming. *** When tax...
by Claire Aston | Mar 26, 2025
Photo credit: HM Treasury HMRC’s target for prosecution ‘charging decisions’ to be set 20% above the rates achieved in 2023-24. These rates have collapsed since pre-pandemic. It will be 2029 before HMRC’s target returns to the rate achieved in 2019-20 – a lost decade,...
by Simon Watkins | Feb 12, 2025
Tax evasion cost UK taxpayers £5.5bn in 2022-23, with 81% from small businesses – up from 66% in 2019-20 Prosecutions for tax evasion down 54% since 2018-19 Phoenixism cost the exchequer at least £500 million in 2022-23 HMRC lacks a specific strategy for...
